Smashing Pumpkins – Gish (CD)

Billy Corgan arrived fully formed on *Gish*, the 1991 debut that announced the Smashing Pumpkins as something distinct from the grunge wave cresting around them, heavier and more psychedelic than their Seattle peers. Producer Butch Vig's work here laid the sonic blueprint for the massive sound he'd refine with Nirvana months later, but the Pumpkins' own ambition, layered guitars and all, was already pointing somewhere further out.